Miranda Jane Seymour (born 8 August 1948) is an English literary critic, novelist and biographer of Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and Jean Rhys among others. Seymour is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.[1] She elected to resign from the Royal Society of Literature in December 2023.[2] She was formerly married to Andrew Sinclair, and Anthony Gottleib and is now married to Ted Lynch.[3]
Miranda Seymour
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Born | (1948-08-08) 8 August 1948 (age 75) |
Occupation | Writer, historian, biographer |
Period | 1975–present |
Subject | Women writers, 20th century history |
Notable works | In My Father's House, I Used to Live Here Once, Chaplin's Girl, The Bugatti Queen |
Notable awards | Pen Ackerley Award |
Website | |
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Miranda Seymour was two years old when her parents moved into Thrumpton Hall,[4] the family ancestral home. She detailed her unconventional upbringing in her 2008 memoir In My Father's House: Elegy for an Obsessive Love (Simon & Schuster, UK[5]),[6] which appeared in the US as Thrumpton Hall (HarperCollins)[7] and won the 2008 Pen Ackerley Prize for Memoir of the Year.[8]
She studied at Bedford College, London, now part of Royal Holloway, University of London, earning a BA in English in 1981.[9]
Seymour began her literary career in 1975 with an historical novel, The Stones of Maggiare.[10] This was followed by six others concerned with Italy and Greece, including Daughter of Darkness, about Lucrezia Borgia,[11] and Medea (1982).[12]
In 1982, Seymour turned to biography, beginning with a group portrait of Henry James in his later years, entitled A Ring of Conspirators.[13] This was followed by biographies of Lady Ottoline Morrell,[14] Mary Shelley[15] and Robert Graves,[16] upon whom she also based a novel, The Telling,[17] and a radio play, Sea Music.
In 2001, she came across material on Hellé Nice, a forgotten French Grand Prix racing driver of the 1930s. After extensive research, Seymour published an acclaimed[18] book, The Bugatti Queen,[19] in 2004 about Nice's ultimately tragic life. This was followed by another life of an unconventional woman, that of 1930s film star, Virginia Cherrill. This was also based on a substantial archive in private ownership, and published as Chaplin's Girl: The Lives and Loves of Virginia Cherrill in 2009.[20]
In 2002, Seymour published a book about herbs: A Brief History of Thyme.[21] Noble Endeavours: Stories from England; Stories from Germany appeared in September 2013 from Simon & Schuster and was described as being a work of 'unfazed optimism'.[22][23]
Seymour returned to biography with In Byron's Wake[24] (2018) which covered the lives of Lord Byron's wife and daughter, Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace.[25][26] I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys was published by Harper Collins in 2022.[27][28]
Seymour reviews and writes articles for newspapers and literary journals, including The Economist, The Times, the Times Literary Supplement, Spectator, and the New York Review of Books.
Formerly a Visiting Professor of English Studies at the University of Nottingham Trent,[29] Seymour is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at King's College London.[30]